Did Princess Diana really sing ‘All I Ask of You’ for Prince Charles?

Netflix released an exclusive clip from The Crown that features Princess Diana singing the Phantom of the Opera's 'All I Ask of You', but did this performance happen in real life?

• Emma Corrin as Princess Diana performed 'All I Ask of You' from the Phantom of the Opera in an exclusive clip of The Crown.
• But how accurate is The Crown? Did Princess Diana actually ever sing for Prince Charles?
• In other royal news, The Queen has a Covid scare as Balmoral staff member tests positive.

The Crown released an unseen clip of Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in the Netflix series, singing the iconic hit from the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack, 'All I Ask of You.' The star, who was hospitalized during the filming of The Crown's fourth season,  recreated the incident—but did it ever happen at all?

In the clip, Princess Diana was shown rolling out of bed and mournfully watching the videotape of her performance that she made for Charles for their anniversary. The scene was filmed for Season 4 Episode 9 of The Crown, an episode titled 'Avalanche'. 

Fans of The Crown will recall that Prince Charles later mocked this anniversary gift and made fun of his wife with his sister Princess Anne.  The Princess Royal, who was recently seen in the cutest throwback childhood footage of Prince Charles at the Queen’s coronation, is very close to her brother.

Although it is unknown whether this was Prince Charles' real reaction, Princess Diana did in fact gift Prince Charles with a videotape of her performing this song—but, as ever, the producers of The Crown did get a little creative when re-creating this performance.

Emma Corrin said in an interview with Vanity Fair, “That it’s exactly as it happened in the series—as in she hired the West End set, got a film crew in, and filmed it for Charles. Which is mental.”

Head researcher for The Crown, Annie Sulzberger, also supported Emma and told The Telegraph that they did not invent this scene and the event did in fact take place in real life.

"We did not make this up," said Annie. "There were a number of [press] reports on this, enough to make us feel comfortable including it in the show. It’s a story that pre-existed the writing of the script.”

But there is, of course, a catch. The researcher did add that it was unclear if Princess Diana actually sang the song, or whether she just danced to a recording of the song.

“To minimize the number of witnesses, there is a chance they played a recording,” Annie said.

The director of this episode, Jessica Hobbs,  also told the Telegraph, “Our understanding was that she’d done a dance for him that was filmed on stage, in the costumes, on the real set. That’s what we understood from the research. So we extended that to her singing.”

The Phantom of the Opera also confirmed that Princess Diana performed 'All I Ask of You' on the Phantom stage for a 'private video.' However, the official page for the Andrew Lloyd-Webber production also failed to specify whether this was a dance performance or whether the Princess sang the song on stage.  

Annie Sulzberger further commented to the publication, “When we found out that Emma could sing we thought, ok, even if Diana wasn’t the best singer in the world and would have preferred to dance this, we don’t know. We have never seen the video. Let’s have her sing it because it’s going to break our hearts, right?” 

So it seems that Princess Diana may have in fact just danced to this song and given a recording of her dance routine to Prince Charles. But it is also possible that she did sing in this recording. 

It's unlikely that we will ever know what took place on that videotape but it certainly involved the Phantom of the Opera song, 'All I Ask of You', and a young Princess Diana trying to make a sweet anniversary gift for her unfaithful husband.